Undercurrents Ep. #1 transcript: Why is Luxon's government so unpopular?

View the episode here.

Episode transcript

Ollie
I want to start by turning back the clock 15 years to when we last had a first term National government. This was the era of John Key. It was the aftermath of the global financial crisis. We'd had the Canterbury earthquakes. The country was facing some pretty serious problems, but that government sailed through to a second term, winning about 47% of the popular vote.

This government now is in a very different position. So what makes this government different? What's changed? 

Jack
I think one of the fundamental differences is that John Key led a government that was able to read the popular mood in a much more astute way. His government kept in place the most popular policies of the previous government. You think about interest-free student loans or Working for Families. There were changes around the edges, but for the most part they kept those flagship Labour policies in place.

And that's something that is reflective of National governments throughout history. National governments are generally managerial. They certainly implement their policies, but they don't undertake sweeping changes. It’s usually Labour governments who are more reforming governments in the New Zealand context.

That's changed with this current National government. In terms of economics, they have largely kept in place the same overarching macroeconomic framework as we've had under successive governments for the last 40 years or so. But in terms of social policies, and certainly if you look at the culture war, this government is radical and it's unrelenting in pushing its own ideological agenda.

We see that in relation to its unrelenting attack on Māori and on the Treaty. We see that in terms of its unrelenting attack on marginalised communities. Most previous National governments aren't so brazen in their disregard for disadvantaged communities, whether it's the homeless, whether it's rainbow communities, whether it's Pacific peoples. They disestablished the Ministry of Pacific Peoples and joked about bombing it.

So, it’s a starkly different government. And of course there's the obvious in terms of Christopher Luxon just being a very poor leader compared to John Key and other previous National leaders. But I think it's more fundamental than that. I think it's that this government is unafraid to push its ideological agenda.

Kassie
I would agree with Jack, especially about reading the room. That feels like a really important aspect of political leadership that Luxon has failed on. Winston Peters, to be fair, is ever the opportunist and is reading the room, at least of his supporter base and likely groups he can bring into his supporter base all of the time. But other than that, especially for our Prime Minister, there's just a lack of reading the room.

I think what we're also seeing is, we talk about this global lack of trust in decision makers, and there has been a trend where it's been difficult for sitting governments to move into a second term. So I think that has changed in the bigger picture as well, which I think doesn't bode well for any government whatsoever to sail into a second term. People are chopping and changing.

What may have been a functioning economy and a functioning global order for some people in places like Aotearoa — I'm not talking about people from the global South, I'm not talking about Māori or people who'd have it tough, I'm talking about probably the most well-to-do or privileged layer of people — that if you worked hard and got on with things, then the world's going to work in your favour. You're going to be able to buy a house. You're going to be able to put your kai on the table, look after your whānau, and so on. But what's happening around the world is this extreme concentration of wealth and power in the hands of the few is sucking the life out of us.

That illusion's been punctured. The mask has come off. A layer of us used to think that you just work hard and get ahead and it's okay. That is no longer the case. And so I think there's this global reckoning happening that our current system is not looking after the majority of us.

And the way that that's coming out is that we are not satisfied with the political options on the table. Nobody's really dealing with the issue in a way that feels like it's going to solve the problem.

Justine
I echo what Jack and Kassie have said. I think very rapidly the right have run out of road to run on politically in terms of the economy, in terms of being able to deliver for everyday working class people. Their management of the economy, the structural impact of that, is an upward concentration of wealth. And there's ever dwindling prospects for people who aren't in that top 10%, top 1% of ultra wealthy people.

So they're not able to just get by on their so-called being great managers of the economy. So I think that explains a little bit of the cultural turn on the right, where you have the National Party veering into these cultural attacks. It's really attacks on communities, on Māori, on trans people, on unhoused people, because that is something that they think they can still maintain a level of popular support with and incite division and maintain their base. Because what they can't do, what they've been unable to do, is consolidate a majority of New Zealanders around their vision for the economy.

I think they've absolutely failed to position themselves as stewards and responsible economic managers. Everyday ordinary New Zealanders are acutely aware that this economy doesn't work for them and have spent years and years in real pain, going backwards. And there is an absolute, I wouldn't even describe it as a latent anger, a very present anger around the economy. And I think the right has absolutely no answer to that besides austerity and the politics of division. That's what we're seeing play out in real terms.

The problem with the politics of division is it still doesn't deliver kai on the table, it doesn't deliver warm housing, stable housing, it doesn't deliver a good health system. It is ultimately a distraction. It's not going to deliver for New Zealanders. It becomes even more clear in these incredibly difficult times that we're living in where we've had the oil shock because of imperial games in the Middle East with Israel and the US.

So I think ultimately it's their failure to have any kind of vision for Aotearoa, for the New Zealand economy, other than this continual wealth accumulating at the very top. 

Ollie
The dominant explanation of this government's unpopularity is centred on the economy. If you're reading The New Zealand Herald, the story they're telling you is that the main challenge facing this government, and its main potential failing, is that the economy isn't performing as well as this government promised it would. We've been in a couple of years now of per capita recession. But the flip side of that is, on that framing, that if the economy were to bounce back slightly, if business confidence were to improve, if house prices would start rising again, then this government's popularity would start rising again.

What do you make of that explanation? I take it, Justine, that's slightly different to what you're saying.

Justine
It's interesting. I think there's a slight shared analysis there. Potentially the only thing I agree with centrists on is I think fundamentally politics is about the allocation of resources and so therefore I do believe the economy is the bedrock of how ordinary people engage in politics. In the times that we live in everything is quite fragmented and there aren't these shared narratives. People are increasingly disengaged with political discourse. And I think what they're feeling is the affect of politics rather than necessarily being really engaged in whatever's happening in Wellington on a day-to-day basis. So I do think the economy is a really big part of the story.

But I think there's a half truth there. If the economy was doing better, if people weren't quite feeling that acute crunch, I think the government would potentially be doing better in the polls. But there's another part to that story, which is that even when the economy does better, working people's lives are not improving. So their metrics of success are not our metrics of wellbeing and success. So even when house prices increase, that might be their metric for what a good economy looks like. But increasingly we're seeing a polarisation, where working class people are not feeling the dividends of that when times are good, because the economy is structured to not deliver for them.

So I do believe it's the economy, but I believe that the rigged nature of the economy, the way that wealth is designed to concentrate at the top, the way that our public services are underfunded and under-resourced in good times and bad, means that no matter what, the economy doesn't deliver for working-class people. And you're going to see continued disenchantment with the political system, regardless of what the GDP is saying.

Ollie
It was interesting reading Christopher Luxon's State of the Nation speech from early this year – the first thing he points to as testament to what he sees as the success of his government is falling interest rates, to the extent that affects mortgage holders. And second was business confidence. Does that tell us something about whose interests this government has in front of mind? 

Jack
Of course. But I think the left would be foolish if we thought the impacts of the current global economy and the current shocks to the economy wouldn't also be impacting a left-leaning government at this time. We also saw a similar dissatisfaction over cost of living issues under the later stages of the previous Labour government under Jacinda Ardern and Chris Hipkins. We need to be very careful that if we were to get back into government that we don't make the same mistakes of the past and that we actually have a transformative economic agenda to lift the incomes of ordinary New Zealanders.

If you look at this current government, they were elected on the platform of reducing rising costs and dealing with the cost of living crisis, and they've actively made it worse. They've increased costs, they've slashed subsidies, they've reduced real wages, whether that's through below-inflation minimum wage increases or through the way that they have approached economic management and the broader economy. But I don't see a vision on the left of politics either that's actually going to deal with the structural issues. We've seen that reflected at a global level as well, when centre-left governments are kicked out of power, just as centre-right governments are. So I think that's something we need to turn our minds to.

Justine
Henry Cooke made a good point querying whether we're entering a period of successive one-term governments, and for that to be a way that people communicate how disenchanted they are with the system. And I agree with Jack. I think it's far bigger than just this government's particular economic management. It is the system and its inability to deliver for working people. And that goes beyond just the centre-right.

Kassie
We have an economy that is not designed to look after us in the day to day, let alone when shocks are happening. Obviously one of the biggest things that we're facing right now around this oil shock is economic warfare deliberately caused by the biggest superpower in the world, using economic attacks and military attacks to be able to serve their own political ends. And that's not going to stop. I don't think we're going to have a stop to empire trying to get their own way through any means necessary. And we're also not going to have a stop to climate shocks. The fact right now that we're preparing in our household for a cyclone, we know that it's hitting up north, we're only going to see more of those.

We have an economy where there's no safety net. It's not designed to look after us. And I think with this conversation about green shoots – which I see as just straight-up gaslighting to be honest, every time I hear the word green shoot – these guys are just trying to convince other business leaders that everything's going to be okay so business confidence stays and people keep spending and then everything appears to remain afloat. It's delusional. It's delusional for all kinds of reasons.

The current settings are so dominated by people who have the most wealth and the most power. Anybody who's played Monopoly, when you get to the end stage of Monopoly and you're the one who's ended up in jail when you have a few dollars to your name, and then your mate or your family member across the board has all the money and all the property, it stops being fun anymore. Nobody wants to play. You might as well just call it a day and end it. And it sounds silly, but there's a truth to what happens when you have people who control the property, the wealth, the media, the economic system, the banks, and so on. They're able to set the rules of the game and they are still benefiting. There are still people who are benefiting but everyday people are not and are not seeing real alternatives to an economy that can actually look after us.

Ollie
We've been talking a bit about inaction – what this government has failed to do to address some of these deep issues in terms of who the economy is benefiting. But if we look at what this government's positive agenda has been, in the sense of what has it actually done, what have its big reforms been? What has stood out to you from its policy programme as being especially popular or unpopular?

Justine
I genuinely struggle to answer the question, what have they done that's been popular?

Kassie
I do think that the original, I will call it a bribe, around tax cuts that National sailed in on did have some popularity. People thought that that was going to make more of a difference than what it actually did. But other than that, it's very hard to point to any particular policy and say it's had widespread appeal, as opposed to just appeal within a small supporter base.

Justine
Part of that I think comes down to Christopher Luxon's weak leadership. I guess a cliché critique of him is that he's out of touch, but I think that's fundamentally the problem. He really is out of touch. He doesn't understand the needs and the aspirations and dreams of ordinary New Zealanders.

I think there's two main streams for me of what this government has done. They've undermined our constitution, Te Tiriti, and they have significantly attacked working people. They have significantly weakened the rights and protections and entitlements of working people in this country. So for me, that's the two main strains that this government has set out to do that, and they have been very radical in their aspirations around that.

Jack
National has been really effective at getting their agenda through Parliament. We can't lose sight of that. They have legislated at pace and they have been relentless in terms of pursuing their agenda. If you contrast that to the previous government, who set up working groups on every issue and took years and years to deliver what should have been relatively simple reforms. One very clear example of that is Fair Pay Agreements, which was instituted just before the last election. Because it was so late in the piece and there wasn't time for that policy to be embedded within the frameworks of government, it was very easy for this current government to then reverse that policy immediately in the first hundred days after they were elected.

As Justine says, whether it's workers' rights, whether it's the attacks on Te Tiriti o Waitangi and Māori, whether it's been their planning reforms and their environmental reforms, which have significantly weakened protections for the natural environment in this country, the list goes on, they have been very effective. I think there is a lesson for that in the left. But I also think that one of the key implications of it is that there has been this blitzkrieg that has been very difficult for the left to keep up with because there's been a new attack every day.

I think we've done well in the circumstances. I think that the extra-parliamentary left, if you like – activist movements, unions, tangata whenua – have been very effective at mobilising against their agenda. The Hīkoi mō Te Tiriti was the largest protest in the history of the country, which Kassie was really involved in organising. But beyond that, unions have found new strength in terms of opposing this government. And I think our ability to resist has been tested, but I think we've risen to the challenge.

My issue is that that needs to be reflected in the left-leaning parliamentary parties as well, because I'm not sure that the same could be said for them, which we can perhaps talk about later. But I think there's a lot that we need to learn from how this administration has governed.

Kassie
I think this government, from their different perspectives, were very clear on having an ideological, radical transformation of our politics. Even the way that they negotiated the coalition agreement, what was in the coalition agreement. People often refer to them as a coalition of chaos. I don't agree with that. What they are doing is creating chaos and isn't working for them necessarily, but I think they have been largely in step with each other about how they implement a very radical agenda and do it swiftly, at pace, and learning from other countries as well.

But I do think that — and this isn't just me being rose-tinted, because it's not the be-all and end-all, as you say, Jack — I think they thought it would go a lot smoother than what it has. I think there was actually a degree of arrogance. And if you take the Treaty Principles Bill as an example, if you looked at what happened with the Voice referendum in Australia, I do believe that David Seymour looked at what took place there, saw what it took to be able to dismantle or sabotage Indigenous rights, and thought he could fairly simply just replicate the same thing here. But obviously that's not what happened, and largely because some of us learnt from our First Nations tuakana to be able to learn how to get ahead of the far right, but also a whole range of other factors.

And Luxon's leadership is one clear obvious example. I just think about some of the men in my life who have led in leadership positions and I just know they're looking at him with embarrassment. It's just embarrassment to see. He's not even being a very good CEO at the moment, let alone a Prime Minister. And so I think that the intent was a radical transformation to be able to take workers' rights back, to get Te Tiriti out of the way because what we know about Te Tiriti is that if we honour it, it means more input from Māori, it means more roadblocks to development, it means more checks and balances for our government. And so to get rid of all of those pesky things and just make it very easy to achieve more profit, more power, privatise more, and so on.

That was the aim, but I actually think they have had more roadblocks than what they anticipated, and that's going to have an effect at the election.

Ollie
Often we talk about this government as a single entity. We use the term 'the government', but this is a coalition, and the different components of this coalition, ACT, National and New Zealand First, do have different interests. They represent different parts of the country and they serve different interests. How do you guys make sense of that dynamic? And what direction is each coalition party pulling? Or to put it another way, when we look at this chaos generated by this government, or the ideological strands within it, which parts come from which of the coalition partners?

Justine
I like to be a vulgar Marxist about understanding our political parties, so you'll have to excuse me and my vulgarity, but for me National sort of represents the broad consensus of the capitalist class. The ACT Party represents a fringe more extreme deregulatory kind of vision, I think more aligned with what we would see as someone like Peter Thiel and his ideology, which is inherently anti-state, anti-government, and really believes in a very hierarchical, very dystopian kind of society.

And I think New Zealand First is a more contradictory political vehicle. So I think there's more regional elements, there's more sort of small business elements to New Zealand First, more cross-class. So I don't think it's always particularly ultra-wealthy in New Zealand First, but I think that kind of reflects in a lot of their cultural emphasis.

But I think what's been really striking with the coalition is Christopher Luxon's complete inability, total vacuum of leadership, vision, sort of ambition. The National Party's idea of what a good society is, that is completely absent. I think the strategy of this government has been led by New Zealand First and the ACT Party. And I think you see an absolute ideological crisis in the larger party to have a collective ambition for Aotearoa New Zealand. That's my view.

Was that too much vulgar Marxism? Jack? Kassie? Do you want to add some nuance to what I said?

Jack
I think that was just the right amount of vulgar Marxism, Justine. The only thing that I would say is that I think where these parties differ most is probably in terms of their economic vision. And that's probably part of the reason why they've been able to undertake an effective economic agenda. But interestingly, although there are differences at the fringes, they've largely been in agreement on where they've been most effective, for example on the Treaty or on kaupapa Māori.

Much has been made of the extremity of David Seymour or, if we want to use that word, of Winston Peters and Shane Jones. But actually, if you look at the comments of leading National Party ministers, including the Prime Minister, but also people like the Treaty Negotiations Minister Paul Goldsmith, they are all really largely aligned in terms of the fundamental shift in discourse in relation to the Treaty.

And I think the reason why this is important to mention is because they have not just been able to make those policy gains, which we've already referred to, but they've shifted the narrative fundamentally. For at least 40 years, perhaps longer, we've had essentially a bipartisan consensus when it comes to the Treaty. Progress has been slow, it's been flawed, but there has been progress towards righting historical wrongs, acknowledging the impacts of colonisation on tangata whenua. You had the establishment of the Waitangi Tribunal and the Treaty claims process. And basically all of that work is at threat currently because of this government. And they have successfully shifted the narrative so that these issues that were just common sense are now at the centre of political debate. And I think that has been incredibly insidious, and the damage will be very long lasting, because now there was for so long a recognition that the state is there to try and right historical wrongs, and now that's essentially been turned on its head.

Ollie
I'm interested in this relationship between, I guess, the two halves of this government's agenda. There's the economic side of it. And then there's what we talked about before as, I suppose, cultural politics. And maybe some of this government's attacks on Te Tiriti are part of that. Justine, earlier you talked about the attention on culture wars as being a distraction from perhaps this government's deeper agenda. Although, Kassie, you've talked about the way in which Te Tiriti itself ties in directly to this government's economic agenda. I'm wondering, Justine, do you agree with what Kassie was saying before, or do you see the culture politics as more purely just a distraction?

Justine
I think that's right. I think there's two kinds of purposes or agendas at work in terms of the attacks on our constitution and Te Tiriti. One is that kind of right-wing populist agenda of sowing division, of scapegoating groups, of fermenting that social polarisation. And we see that across the globe and in the global North. But I think the other thing is an extractivist agenda. So Indigenous rights, Te Tiriti o Waitangi, absolutely stand in the way of a government that is, as I said, running out of road. We know that the economic status quo isn't working, that people are disenchanted. We also know that capital wants to accumulate wealth. That is the impetus of our system. It is all about wealth accumulation. And they're running out of road.

So how do we accumulate more? Their idea, and where their tension is, is that they really believe that growth, that the road to political success, runs through growth. And they don't make any kind of value judgement on what kind of growth, where's the growth, is it good growth, is it bad growth. It's just about wealth accumulation at any cost. And I mean you see that with Shane Jones, you see that with the environmental, incredibly destructive legislation aimed at pillaging our natural environment.

I think the attacks on Te Tiriti are a part of that. And I don't want to come out as anti-growth because I think that's not a great way for the left to frame our criticism of their agenda. But it's a kind of cancerous politics. To me it's like a cancer. We're not talking about growing our health system. We're not talking about nurturing our tertiary education system. We're not talking about growing good jobs. We're talking about growing the wealth of the tiny few at the expense of the many. But that is the agenda of this government, and part of their attacks on our constitution has been clearing any roadblocks that stand in the way of that extractive kind of goal.

So yeah, I think for them it's a two-for-one, Ollie. And I think they're looking at America, they're looking at Europe, they're looking even in Canada, and they're seeing that the right wing is having some measure of success with the strategy. And I think there's nothing new, it's not a particularly original strategy, but that is their strategy.

Ollie
When it comes to the more radical parts of this government's agenda, is your sense that Luxon and National are wanting to embrace this style of right-wing populism, or is it rather just that they have no ideas of their own and they're being led by the coalition minor parties?

Kassie
Yeah, one thing I thought a lot about in the first year or two was, especially with the Treaty Principles Bill being led by David Seymour, this idea that David Seymour was the fringe kind of extremist who was driving the anti-Te Tiriti agenda. But then really thinking about how in reality it really works for the National Party to be able to maintain this kind of centrist idea and almost this sensible way of respecting the Treaty, in the sense of, we respect all the settlements that have been made, but things come to an end now, we're not going to have any special privileges from here on. That would be their framing and their way of thinking about it. But it works for them to be able to have political figures and leaders who are driving more radical agendas that they don't have to put their name to in the same way.

And so I think it's really important for us to be able to see that they are moving in step. There are things that ACT can do or Winston Peters can do that National can't do, probably with their voters. But it still ultimately serves these right-wing political ends, which is ultimately about opening that economy up and being able to maintain this power.

One of the things that I think a lot about as well is this way that if you think about Trump-style politics, you look at basically what's happening in any Western country at the moment in terms of this rise of the far right, the context is usually that there are economic problems going on and you have strongman political leaders positioning themselves as the solution who are going to come in and save everyone. And they almost always rely on painting one group as fearful and to be despised and hated. And that means that you can be in the right group. And I think this taps into some kind of, I don't know, the behavioural science behind it, but stuff around our psychological need to belong for security, especially in difficult times.

And I think we see that, not as explicit obviously as in the US where you do have ICE agents literally taking children and parents from their homes and putting them in prisons and detention centres, but you are seeing this underlying fear thing come up. Our instincts around protecting ourselves and fending off people that we see as taking our jobs or our homes or whatever we have, which is a racialised dynamic, right? It is a weaponised racialised dynamic that is creating a sense of fear and division that doesn't serve us either.

Justine
One of the things that I was taught as I was trained to be a union organiser was just a really simple phrase, which is that anger is there before you get there. And your job is to channel it in a productive way, to bring people together, to help them realise that they can change their workplace, that they can win better wages or better conditions. And I want to apply that to politics. So anger is there before our political leaders get into this situation.

The anger is there, and my view of that is that anger comes from a rigged economy, that people are really struggling and people want really simple things. They want to live good lives. They want to be able to provide for their family. They want to be able to flourish. The anger's there. How our politicians respond to it is another thing entirely. And if you have an investment in a rigged economy, you're obviously not going to get there and say, well, I'd like to channel this anger at our economy, because you want to keep the status quo, right? The status quo suits them.

It makes sense to me that on the right, for those who are protectors, or custodians, of this rigged economy who want this to continue, they have to scapegoat people because that becomes a way of pointing people in the wrong direction so that they don't then turn their eyes to the billionaire class. They don't turn their eyes to the politicians who are enabling them and making our lives demonstrably worse by further rigging the economy, by further snatching away a future where we can all flourish.

And so I think it's really that simple thing. The anger's there, and the politicians are responding to the anger. How they respond to the anger depends on what they want to achieve. And so on the right, they don't want to change the economic settings. Those economic settings suit them and their donors really well. So they have to then start to kind of manage those contradictions and point the finger elsewhere and scapegoat groups. And you go to points of difference. I think that's well documented in history, right? We've seen it before.

Ollie
I think another sleight of hand here, or a way in which this government is distracting, and this is related in a sense to its economic agenda, but it also goes towards the way our government works. I think a popular line in attacking Te Tiriti has been to frame Te Tiriti as anti-democratic in some sense. I think they're right to pick up on a sense that a lot of people feel like they don't have a say anymore and that our democracy has become weaker, because that is true.

A core part of neoliberalism has been weakening democracy. Local government has way fewer powers than it used to. People have a total mismatch between what they expect their council to do and what it can do. More fundamentally, we've got baked into our government structure now these very essentially limiting neoliberal rules about how we can run our government. That weakens democracy. That weakens our ability to act collectively together to do things. And I think on some level people pick up on that because they've noticed that they're angry, they've elected governments that they hope will change things, but the fundamentals haven't changed as well. So Justine, when you say before about anger's already there, I agree with that. And I think that goes beyond just the cost of living, but also to how our government works.

Justine
I think that's a really good point, Ollie. By the way, I'm enjoying you as the Wallace Chapman of the New Zealand left. I just want to compliment you on your style.

Ollie
We'll be editing this part out.

Justine
Really? I liked it.

Ollie
I was hoping to more be the Sean Plunket of the New Zealand left.

Justine
Okay, sorry. That's interesting. Okay, we have to take a totally different turn then. We're going to have to change this up a bit.

Ollie
We've talked about the points of consistency across this coalition government, but Jack, earlier you mentioned that there are some points of tension on the economic side of things. Can you tease that out a bit for us? Where do you see the potential conflicts and how might that play out as we head towards the election and a potential second term of this government?

Jack

I think the differences between National and ACT are becoming increasingly marginal, but are historically obvious. ACT has been, or are, the ideological successors of the extreme neoliberal agenda that played out in the Fourth Labour government. So there's basically no service that they don't want to privatise. There's no department they don't want to disestablish. And there's no worker protection that they don't want to abolish.

But I think the more interesting contrast is between National and New Zealand First, because New Zealand First do really like to play into this idea of economic populism. And how much of it is genuine is certainly questionable. But there are issues in which Winston Peters does take a different approach. And we've seen that play out on a number of different issues, whether it was the replacement of the ferries and infrastructure more broadly.

But I think that heading into the election, it'll be the responsibility of those of us holding these parties to account to try and wedge them and to expose those divisions, but also to paint a picture that actually they are in the same boat. And we can't let New Zealand First get away with their complicity in this far-right agenda. We've seen Winston Peters try to distance himself from some of the more extreme policies. We saw that recently in relation to employment rights, while at the same time voting for the legislation, but then just attacking unions and saying that they're the reason that he's not voting against this law because they contacted him too late, which is just ludicrous. I think it's our job to expose the hypocrisy of their approach.

Justine
I might be one of the biggest haters of New Zealand First, but it is quite remarkable the way they've been able to position themselves as a populist anti-government force in government, and that that's then reflected in the polls where you do have increased support. I don't think we've seen a party be able to pull this off before. The tried and true adage is that when you're in government, you will be punished by that government and tarnished by that government, but that doesn't seem to have been the case so far with New Zealand First.

So I think for progressives and the left, that is a huge job ahead of us, to make sure that New Zealand First does wear what this government has done. They're a huge part of this government's agenda and they can't get away with it, because right now they're managing something I think that is quite remarkable: positioning themselves as anti-government populists in government.

Kassie
I agree, and that's what Trump has been able to successfully do, and so we know that it can be a winning strategy. I agree with Justine, and there's a real concern about New Zealand First lifting up their popularity. I think that the left needs to take that very seriously. I think that it's been important to target Luxon because he is such a terrible leader and is making terrible decisions. But I think we need to also be thinking about the other leaders and how we need to make sure that, for example, if someone does replace Luxon, that National aren't able to recover their reputation with just no Luxon.

I also want to talk about a tension that is not so much ideological, but more practical, in the sense that ACT, National and New Zealand First are all going for the same voters. One thing that I've been struggling to see is how the National Party is actually trying to reach a layer of society beyond 70-plus voting Pākehā. I just can't really see it. I know there will be nuances, but I'm just not getting it. It seems to me right now that there seems to be a real competition, almost a race to the bottom, of who can be the most racist, who can bring in the most culture war stuff to be able to appeal to that base of people who are largely older Pākehā men, who obviously feel disenfranchised with the world, even though most of them still hold a degree of the wealth and the power.

And I think that's a curious tension for me, because if they're going to spend all of their time just fighting it out for that group of people, what opportunities does that pose for the left? And I think that's an exciting tension to move into.

Ollie
So we're now just over six months out from the election. We started this conversation off by raising the historically unusual possibility that this is a one-term National government. But of course, while National is consistently polling less than Labour in the polls, the left and right blocks are still very, very close. And history is obviously on the right's side here. So if we cast our minds forward to a potential second-term coalition government or something like that, what does that actually look like? What do you see as the core parts of this government's agenda going forward to a second term?

Justine
I think it'll be worse. I can only speculate, but if you look at Trump's first term versus Trump's second term, I think you saw one, a consolidation of that project, and two, an escalation. And I think we should expect consolidation and escalation and a continuation of what is quite a radical project to reshape Aotearoa.

We always say that every election is such an important election, and so I don't know how to say this without sounding like that, but I genuinely feel that the 2026 election is potentially the most critical election we've ever faced. And I think that for this government to be re-elected, I think we can expect consolidation, escalation, and a continuation of this radical project. On the other hand, I do think that if re-election does happen, it will be on the thinnest of margins and without much of a mandate. So I think that will be a very interesting tension.

And I think, to be honest, as much as we say that there hasn't been a one-term National government, I think we're living in very different political times. To me it will be Labour's loss more than the coalition's success, if that is the case.

Jack
I completely agree. And I think that the fact that it is so close between the left and right blocks right now is an indictment on the left, to be perfectly honest. Going to Kassie's earlier point around how the parties in the government are competing to be the most racist, the left should be far ahead in those circumstances, but they're not. And I think that that is a result of failures of all of the centre-left parties who are in Parliament.

With Labour we have seen a complete lack of any transformative policy or a positive vision for the future. With the Greens we've seen incredibly good policy, but also not really the kind of consistent anti-establishment narrative that we've seen from, for example, Zack Polanski and the Green Party of England and Wales, who have been able to really capture the mood in the UK. And of course with Te Pāti Māori, we've seen a complete implosion and focus on internal drama rather than taking the fight to the coalition.

And so I think the pressure is on. There's no time to waste. And we have to hold those parties to account because at the end of the day, as effective as we might be on the streets, in unions and activist movements, voters vote for those who are on the ballot. And so there's a generational opportunity here that should not be wasted. I think this is the time that we need bold, transformative policies. And we need to unshackle ourselves from the fear and the constraints that neoliberalism so often puts on us.

I think about the fact that relative to similar countries in the OECD, we actually have relatively low levels of government debt. We can afford to be bold. We can afford to put forward policies that actually seek to transform the nature of our economy. And although they might not be retail policies, we also need to look at the infrastructure of government. We need to repeal the Public Finance Act and the Regulatory Standards Bill. Going to a point I think you were talking about earlier, Ollie, we actually need to unrestrain the ability of the state to deliver for working people and for marginalised communities. And there needs to be some serious policy thinking happening now so that when, or if, the left gets into government, they are able to deliver on a radical agenda at pace and not set up a million working groups and not dither around the edges, but actually strike to the heart of the barriers that are holding us back.

Justine
I like to take a vulgar Marxist view of the left as well, and so I'll quickly offer that I think part of the issue with the left is also structural. And we see it again across the global North. For me, the fundamental thing is the right has organised money and we have organised people. And for 40 years the neoliberal project was about ripping up the very foundations of that, our trade union movement, our civil society. The onus is on us to rebuild that.

So my plea is for everyone to be an active participant in that, because it's only through mass organisation that we will have the constituency, the base, and the power to enact the kind of transformational change that we need to see. You see these left-wing parties absolutely struggling in similar conditions. I think the right and the left, there is an existential question because we are in existential times where, again, the neoliberal project is running out of road, and so where do we go from here?

And in order to really transform this country, we're going to have to get really organised. I encourage people to join political parties, to engage in them, to join their unions and to get organised. If there's a simple contribution we can make this year, it's literally creating little change-the-government groups where we talk to our neighbours and our colleagues and make sure that everyone's on the same page. Because fundamentally it is organised people that will transform this country and beat organised money.

And the structural issue at the heart of the left is that we need to organise our people. We need to rebuild our trade union movement. We need to rebuild our civil society. And that is the challenge that we face, our generation faces, our historical task, to be an even more vulgar Marxist.

Kassie
I agree with both the vulgar Marxism and what Jack's been putting forward. And I think as well, maybe this is getting down into the detail, but one of the things that we have to be able to challenge is the right-wing propagated idea that there's not enough money to have good lives and to pay for the things that we need. I think that they've done a very good job of making that the overall belief that most people have: that we can't have nice things like hospitals because there's not enough money, and there's never going to be enough money, and therefore it's just always this endless race-to-the-bottom trade-off of who's going to lose out, and the hope that you can compete to be able to get enough to be able to pay for the private healthcare or the things that can look after you, while realising that's not possible for everyone, right?

And I think that the left has taken this on as well. The left has taken on the idea that there's not enough money, and it's just absurd. When we're looking at these mega billionaires turning into trillionaires around the world, which by the way the spotlight is very rarely on, or it's treated as this abstract thing, like who really knows what a trillion dollars actually is? But when you think about the actual money that has been able to be made off our backs, off our environment, off just making money off money, which is what the top level of people do, there is enough to go around, there is enough abundance, there's enough resource for all of us.

And I think that is essential. I think that's the biggest, most effective lie that has been told to us, that there's not enough money to go around, so we just have to fight and scrape amongst ourselves for the pieces, without realising that we're not looking at where the wealth is being made, who has control of it, and how it's going back into our collective good.

Justine
I think our demand to redistribute wealth is presented as unrealistic, irrational or impossible. But that's just what powerful people say to consolidate their power. And where the left in government has failed to do that, it's not because it's not possible. I think the other charge is that we're economically illiterate, but what they mean is, again, just something people say to consolidate their power. "Of course, you're stupid, you wouldn't understand, I need to have all this wealth, it's good for you for me to be accumulating a trillion dollars."

The reality is the left hasn't picked the fight because they think they're going to lose. And I think the ultimate thing we can do is embrace the hatred of the billionaire class, of the trillionaire class, of the multi-millionaire class. The most transformational governments during the genesis of the era of social democracy, even in the US, FDR said, I welcome their hatred. And that is exactly the positioning we need to take. We need to have this fight. We need to be ready to win it and we need to build the power to win it, but we need to have the fight and we need to welcome their hatred.

They don't get to define the terms of this and they don't get to dictate to us what is possible and what is not. And I think we all know there's enough wealth in this country, there's enough wealth in the world, for people to live good lives.

Jack
And I think the left needs to rediscover the power of universalism. Because part of the fundamental problem, and why we're failing to connect with voters not just here in New Zealand but around the world, is because centrists love to triangulate. They love to target a very tiny minority section of the population with really placid technocratic policies. They love a good tax rebate. Whereas actually, if we target a big tent with bold universal policies, then we can actually connect to people's everyday realities in terms of what they need to live good lives.

So, give a shout-out to ActionStation for the free dental campaign. That is an example of that. Truly campaigning for a national health service, I think, would resonate widely. A national education service. Why do we have early childhood education as this for-profit service? And you can apply that across the economy.

And that's not to say that we don't learn the lessons of the past. We're not going to be rolling out universal programmes in the way that it was done in the 30s, which excluded large sections of the population in many ways, both intentional and unintentional. It's not to say that we shouldn't support devolution, and targeted programmes by Māori for Māori solutions are a perfect example of that. But it is saying that everyone has the right to healthcare. Everyone has the right to education. And that's not just an ethereal right. They're actually going to receive that service, whoever it's delivered by.

So I think the left needs to have bold, universal, transformational policies. If anything, we're seeing the opposite from centre-left parties, particularly Labour, with their three free GPs visits a year, which is ludicrous. And I think they had a similar response when the Greens proposed free dental in the last campaign. So there is a real power in universalism.

Justine
I think you see the power of universalism in the concern and the level of anger at how this government has treated our public health system. Let's make no mistake, the right wants to privatise our health system. And the reason they've been unable to do so is because our public health system is something that is a taonga that New Zealanders understand, and they want to protect it, and they know that a privatised health system will not deliver for them.

So I totally agree with what you're saying about means testing and how we need to embrace universalism. I do think the three free GP visits is a small example of universalism, and I do think that lesson is filtering out on the left. But I completely agree, it's something that needs to be absolutely embraced at scale, and then we need to see an extension as well of our public health system into realms like dental.

Ollie
So I suppose the question that leaves us with is, is it enough to wait for this government just to implode? And if not, how does the left actually take advantage of this government's unpopularity and win?

Kassie
I don't think it's enough to wait till they implode because it's very possible that the right could win just on the margins and they can still have enough power to be able to ram through whatever further agenda they have unimpeded. But there's huge discontent about it. And I think that we can't allow the right to win at any cost. I think it's the most important thing to ensure that even if it is not a left bloc that is our wildest dreams — and I'll be honest that the left bloc right now that is moving ahead isn't my wildest dream, certainly — this is ultimately about stopping a very dangerous agenda and at the very least putting some harm minimisation in place. Because if we have another right-wing government, we know it will be more privatisation, Te Tiriti will be further dismantled, all of these things.

But we do know that actually a left bloc will not lead us down that path. It might not take us where we need to go entirely, but it will put a stop to the most overt attacks, which is needed because let's be real, most of us don't have time to be thinking about every single attack that's going on right now. We also need to put kai on the table for our families. We also need to be going to the hospitals and spending a 14-hour wait trying to get healthcare. We need relief from what has been going on.

But I think we also need to be looking to international examples. And I'm sure that I've got a couple of nerds in the room here for Mamdani and Zack Polanski. We are actually seeing the left win in new, exciting, modern ways, powerful ways that are posing real solutions. So we can talk about Mamdani over in New York, and I'm not proposing that we need a Mamdani here, I think that's a little bit trite. But what I do think is we need some real solutions first of all. And if those solutions don't come, we have to organise anyway, because as Justine says, we have people. They might have money. But the thing that I've learned is that money isn't always enough. In fact, money makes you lazy.

When you have access to heaps of election advertising and paying your mates to clog up the airwaves and get the media doing what it's doing, that isn't actually always enough to be able to win. And I think our opportunity here is that this is a deeply unpopular government. They're doing an incredibly bad job. It's difficult to see them gain popularity. It's difficult to see any changes economically that are going to be happening between now and the election, which is a problem, but also shows that they are poor at managing the economy. And we have to work that to our advantage.

So I think that if there is anyone listening right now, and if you have any interest in fighting this government, if you have any interest in a better Aotearoa, it's time to really get stuck in. It's time to focus in on whatever you're good at, whether or not it's organising, whether or not, I don't know, it could be absolutely anything. Even just talking to your mates and whānau. Now is a time to get serious because we can win, but that's going to take some real effort to do.

Justine
2026 is about changing the government. Look, I think we need an immediate reprieve and a change of government is going to deliver that. Fair Pay Agreements, pay equity, funding our health system, ending the recruitment freeze. Right now when a nurse leaves, we're not recruiting to replace them. These are the kinds of things, right? Even just the fuel crisis, the absolute lack of leadership, where you can just look across the ditch and you can see the response from the Australian government — free public transport, actual assistance helping people get to and from where they need to go in this crisis. We're not seeing that here. We need a change of government, and we're going to deliver that with people power. I know we can do it.

I think we can't take for granted how much of a reprieve, how much of a breather, a change of government is going to deliver for us. We need Fair Pay Agreements. Just from us as trade unionists, having talked about the need to repair our social fabric, rebuild our trade union movement, Fair Pay Agreements is a huge part of that. And Labour has committed to reinstating Fair Pay Agreements. That's just one example of the kind of things that would happen if we did change the government.

And we do need to change the government. So sorry for a call to action, but it is unfortunately a call to action. We do need to change the government. Please get involved in changing the government.

Jack
The left wins when we're positive, when we're bold, when we're outwardly focused, when we reject technocratic solutions, and when we're relentlessly focused on lifting the material interests of everyday people. We have a historic opportunity to change this government. So let's do it.

This transcript has been lightly edited for readability.